


Dearly Beloved

by JamtheDingus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Crush at First Sight, Drunken Kissing, Flustered Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Shiro Has Bad Luck, but also shiro meets his soulmate so, but only vaguely, flirty lance (voltron), only like two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamtheDingus/pseuds/JamtheDingus
Summary: Shiro’s car breaks down in the rain and he’s stubborn enough not to ask for a jump even though he's right in front of someone's house.Luckily, Lance hops out in the rain to help him, anyway.---Shiro lets himself drown in his own self-pity and muddy water until there’s a hesitant knock at his window. He startles so much that he honks the horn when he jerks his head up, and he’s greeted by the face of an angel giggling at him.As he rolls down the window, the stranger stands up straight and grins at him from underneath a blue hood. “Need some help?”





	Dearly Beloved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nife/gifts).



> for my incredible friend on tumblr @niffty24! who deserves the entire universe!!!

Shiro has to force himself not to bang his head against his steering wheel as his car rolls to an absolutely pitiful stop in the middle of a dirt road. If it were alive, it’d probably be hacking and coughing as it lay on its deathbed; Shiro desperately clinging to its hand as he pleaded for it to last for just five more miles.

… Aaaand he’s officially lost it. Great.

With a loud sigh, Shiro kicks open the door to the old thing. It’s probably nearing twenty years at this point and, despite how much effort Shiro puts into making it last as long as possible, is nearing the end of its days.

It would’ve been great if it had crapped out on a nice, sunny day. Instead, Shiro finds himself stumbling out onto wet gravel as a thunderstorm rocks the heavens above.

He was  _also_ in the middle of nowhere so that was an added plus, he sarcastically thought to himself,  _sarcastically_.

Well— it was the middle of nowhere if you disregarded the acres of farmland to both his left and right, as well as the handsome four-story home in the middle of a nearby field.

Shiro holds his hands above his eyes as he squints past the thick blankets of rainwater pelting down on him. He’s sure he sees lights in a window or two and briefly considers going to ask for help. But also he would hate to be shot just for trying to ask for a jump. You never know what could happen once you knock on someone’s door, after all.

He resigns himself to the cold water soaking into his coat as he pops the hood.

*

Lance is balancing a pencil on his nose and resisting throwing carpet fuzz into his fireplace when he notices the car that’s parked halfway down the way.

He has the house all to himself for the weekend. What with his parents going on their anniversary trip and his sisters dragging his brother around town five cities over, it couldn’t have been any of them traversing through the rain. He quickly dives for the window to squint into the dark, half-suspiciously but mostly just to be nosy.

He watches as a handsome somebody bends himself into his car’s intestines, and Lance has to force himself not to ogle his behind as he did. There was just something about a pair of well-fitting slacks hiding away a tight butt.

Lance shakes his head to snap out of it, pressing his palms against his cheeks as he watches the stranger struggle in the dark. It was nearing sunset, and most of the remaining light was hidden behind the thick layers of bordering forest, crops, and barns for their animals— and it didn’t look like Stranger had a flashlight out with him, either.

So… this could either be an elaborate kidnapping/murder plot— or someone was just very ill-prepared for their car breaking down in Buttfuck, Nowhere.

Lance is in the middle of telling off his imaginary offenders (in what is, frankly, a masterpiece of daydream-cinema that deserves to be seen by the public) when Handsome Stranger stands up straight, glances at the sky, and proceeds to promptly slip on the flooding dirt road and fall right on his slacked behind.

What a dork.

The snort that comes out of Lance would have been incredibly disgusting  _and_ embarrassing if anyone else had been around to witness it. So is the dopey smile that breaks out on his face.

~~Lance immediately falls for him, too.~~

*

Shiro sloughs gravel-water from his pants as he resists the urge to square off with the sky itself. Instead, he does the very mature thing of turning the other cheek as he hobbles back to his door.

He flops into his seat, uncaring of the drippings that soak into the cracked, leather crevices. Instead, he lets his forehead drop against the steering wheel as he sighs the heaviest he’s ever sighed in his adult life.

Shiro is basking in his own self-pity and muddy water when there’s a hesitant knock at his window. He startles so much that he honks the horn as he jerks his head up, and he’s rewarded by the face of an angel giggling back at him.

As he rolls down the window, the stranger stands up straight and grins at him from underneath a blue hoodie. “Need some help?”

*

Shiro is still flubbing for his words when they reach the house. On the way up the path, he’d learned three distinct things:

1\. The boy who’d run out to come help him in nothing but a varsity hoodie and short-shorts was named Lance.  
  
2\.  Every time Lance looked at him with his sparkling blues and a cheeky grin, or brushed against him with his soft skin, it was like an electric current opens in his heart and sends it into overdrive.

And,

3. Lance had  _incredible_ legs.

He makes it a point not to stare at them as he wrings out his hair, careful not to spray water all over the foyer. Lance, on the other hand, doesn’t care one bit as he flings his head this way and that to get out the excess water.

Locks of wavy brown curl around his cheeks when he finishes, face just slightly flushed as he refocuses his gaze to Shiro. “Car troubles, am I right?”

“Uh— yeah…” Shiro straightens his spine, cracking a smile. “I’ve had it for ten years too long, I guess.”

Lance ushers him further into the house, yanking open a creaky door to produce two fluffy towels for each of them. “Oh, man. You’ve got  _nothing_ on my mother. We have a tractor out back that hasn’t worked since  _before_ I was born, but she refuses to get rid of it _‘in case we need it!’_ , she says.”

He fondly shakes his head, tossing Shiro a towel. “I tell her all the time,  _‘Mami, we already bought, like, multiple ones since then!’_ — but she insists!”

His voice goes muffled as he disappears beneath the towel, and Shiro takes the opportunity to get a hold of himself. It isn’t often that he finds himself infatuated with someone— and even rarer that it’s a stranger!— but he liked to think he was mature enough to atleast  _pretend_ he could speak without stuttering like a lovestruck idiot.

When he zones back in, Lance is staring at him with his head tilted just a bit to the left, raking his fingers through his hair. The silence extends between them for an awkward handful of seconds, until Shiro clears his throat with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry, what did you say?”

Lance doesn’t take offence. If anything, his smile grows even more teasing. “I asked if you wanted a shower, or something warm to munch on while I go find some jumper cables.”

Shiro frowns at that, swiping the towel through his hair one more time before he folds it over his arm. “I couldn’t. I mean, it’s inappropriate for me to take a shower in a stranger’s house—” Or even let him do any of the work that came with his lost cause of a vehicle.

Lance interrupts him before he can continue his argument. “Nonsense! You already know I’m Lance, and you’re…?”

“Takashi.” Shiro hurries to introduce himself. “My friends call me Shiro.”

Lance beams, darting forward to give his hand a firm shake, and it’s then that Shiro realizes he stepped right into Lance’s trap. “There you go— We’re friends, Shiro! And friends let friends help each other.”

He shimmies behind Shiro’s back and pushes him further into the house. His touch is an incredible comfort that Shiro finds himself subconsciously leaning into to as he begs his heart to stop going crazy in his chest. “Now, you go on upstairs— first door to the left— and I’ll go see if I can get your car started.”

Lance parks him right in front of said stairs and takes a step away. Shiro fumbles with his towel, but Lance steals that away to join his own on the floor.

“Really, I can do it myself.” Shiro tries to argue.

Lance only clicks his tongue at him, snapping his fingers to hurry him up the steps. “I got it, Shiro! Now listen: the water gets hot really quick, so be careful up there, yeah?” He shoots Shiro a wink before he turns on his heel and marches back towards the front door. “Wouldn’t want you to burn that pretty skin of yours!”

Shiro sucks in a sharp breath, pressing an incredulous hand to his face as he tries to quell the blushing mess his cheeks must be, but try as he might he can’t stop the beaming smile that makes itself comfortable on his face.

(Just outside the front door, Lance is in a similar predicament. “Pretty skin?  _Really_ , Lance?”)

*

Half an hour later, when they’ve both calmed themselves and Lance has tried his hardest to fix Shiro's poor car (to no avail), Shiro finds himself in a predicament.  _Another_ predicament, disregarding the car troubles.

He’s naked in Lance’s bathroom and his clothes are about 20 feet down the hall, in the washing machine. There’s absolutely nothing for him to wear other than a towel that is about a foot too small to wrap around his waist, and a pair of fuzzy blue slippers.

Shiro shakes his head at himself in the mirror, naked as a baby and barely drying in the after-shower humidity.

He shakes his head at himself for so long that he’s honestly startled when Lance knocks on the door. “You didn’t slip and drown in there, did you?”

Shiro kind of wishes he did, if he were being honest.

He must stay quiet for too long because the doorknob starts to jiggle. Shiro throws himself at the door, if only to save an ounce of his dignity for the rest of the day. “No, I’m fine! Just ran out of clothes.”

“Wh— Oh!”

Lance laughs awkwardly from the other side, and the jiggling blessedly stops. “Just a minute!”

In the end, Shiro is able to squeeze into a old, oversized t-shirt of Lance’s, and a pair of super stretchy sweatpants. Lance frankly refused to bring anything of his siblings or his father’s to wear, but it was incredibly worth the deep search in his closet just for the image of Shiro’s ample chest stretching out his shirt.

When Shiro is finally decent and the two are much less flustered, Lance leads them back to the living room. They drop on the couch, a respectable cushion-length away from one another, and Lance starts the conversation with, “So I’ve got good news and bad news.”

Shiro’s heart plummets for a moment, like when a gymnast misses the bar they’re reaching for, but Lance continues on before he can properly panic. “Bad news is I couldn’t get your car working. We’ll have to call a tow truck in the morning, most likely.”

“Oh!” The relief that floods through him is going to be embarrassing when Shiro thinks about it with a clearer head. “Oh— that’s alright. I’ll just get a taxi, then.”

Lance shushes him, completely ignoring the respectable distance Shiro had placed between them in order to press his finger against Shiro’s lips. “Good news is: you can stay here for the night! I’m not expecting any of my family to be over for, like, an entire week. We can just hang out until tomorrow morning.”

Shiro reflexively licks his lips as Lance’s finger stays pressed against them, and the two dart apart as awkwardly as one can expect love-smitten idiots to. Shiro carefully readjusts his shirt so that it doesn’t squeeze him too tight when he leans back. “Are you sure that’s alright? I’d hate to impose more than I already have.”

Lance waves a dismissive hand. “As long as you swear not to be a murderer, it’s no problem at all. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

He glances at him, then, deliberate if not a tiny bit shy. “If you  _want_ to stay, that is.”

Shiro leans back against the couch, as if he’s stunned. Then, he sucks his lower lip between his teeth as he bashfully fingers the soft undercut at the back of his neck. “I’ve never had a sleepover before.” 

Lance can honestly say to himself that, before this moment, he’d never had a crush on anyone harder than he had a crush on Takashi Shirogane.

*

Another half an hour later, when they can no longer fill the silence between them with small-talk, Lance tucks a lock of hair behind his ears and peeks at Shiro through his eyelashes. “This is making me so nervous. Do you want some wine or something?”

Shiro laughs, relieved all over again. “ _Please_.”

*

And, exactly an hour later and 3/4ths of the way through a bottle of his mom’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Lance has convinced Shiro to join him in sprawling across the living room floor. Lance prods at the fireplace, urging the dying embers to slowly crackle to life again under his touch.

When the fire roars and washes pleasantly over their skin, the two down their glasses nigh simultaneously.

“Wine is so gross.” Lance says, reaching for the bottle again anyway.

His hand is shooed away as Shiro slides his knees underneath himself and grabs it instead, popping the cork to fill Lance’s glass once more.

When he holds the stem out to him, Lance wonders if it’s possible to get his face stuck in a permanent, dopey grin.

Shiro settles again, pouring himself some more of the staining red, and Lance twirls his glass once or twice as he looks him over for the nth time that evening.

Firelight outlines his features and paints him in a warm glow that only enhances his beauty, and that only makes Shiro all the more endearing when his eyes sparkle as he watches the wood slowly burn and fill the home with its pleasant scent.

“You’re cute.”

Shiro fumbles at the sudden words, but saves himself from a lapful of wine. His cheeks flush as pink as his lips are stained red as he sets his glass down, far enough away that he won’t accidentally knock it over. “ _You’re_ forward.”

One of Lance’s eyebrows lift, daring him to do something about it, and Shiro gingerly side-eyes him when Lance crawls closer.

“Let me try something.” Lance murmurs, slotting himself directly in front of Shiro. He lifts Shiro’s arm to hook them together by their elbows, sliding close enough for their thighs to press.

Their glasses clink together in their entwined toast, and Lance’s eyes flutter shut as he takes a sip. “Mm.”

Shiro gulps mostly air, but he pulls away when Lance does. “Yeah?”

They stay close enough that Shiro sees Lance’s pupils dilate as they open again to focus directly on him. “I once read doing it like that makes it taste the best.”

Shiro licks his lips, and it doesn’t take an expert to notice the burst of excitement that shows through the simple action. “Did it?”

Their legs stay pressed together, and Shiro lets his hand fall to press against Lance’s upper thigh when the latter leans further into his space. He gets a wink, then, extremely confident even if Lance’s face is  _also_ tinged red (and not from the wine). “Why don’t you taste it yourself? Saved some for you right here.”

His lips purse as he tongue slips out to lick them clean, and Shiro doesn’t hesitate to capture them with his own.

While not exactly tipsy, they  _are_ buzzed. And, as such, they aren’t exactly the most graceful as Shiro deepens the kiss with a gentle nudge to Lance’s back. They bump together, nearly knocking one another over on impact. In between one kiss and the next, they giggle about it together.

Lance lifts himself to his full kneeling height, just barely taller than Shiro like that, and plops himself straight onto Shiro’s lap. His legs straddle Shiro’s tightly, but he doesn’t have time to give him a teasing squeeze as Shiro dips forward again to press his lips to his chin, following the curve of it to his jaw and even as far as his collarbone.

“Tastes good.” Shiro murmurs, directly against the shell of his ear.

Lance shivers at both the contact and the statement; a pleasurable wave coiling around his spine like a vine curling around a fence over the years. It grows into a full body tremble when Shiro keeps him held comfortable snug as he sucks a hickey right onto the swell of his skull, just behind his ear.

Not one to be outdone, Lance grips onto Shiro tighter. His nails dig into his shoulder blades enough that Shiro jolts, and Lance soothes away the pain with a gentle nip to the reddening skin as he dips himself low.

He focuses on Shiro’s neck, suckling at his Adam’s apple enough that he can feel it bobbing with every ragged swallow Shiro takes, and he gifts the other with a handful of bruising kisses that will definitely be hard to hide over the next few days.

He also lets himself trail his fingers down from his shoulders, to his pecs. How could he resist with them packaged so nicely, after all? With a teasingly firm squeeze to each, he pulls away.

They’re more than a little hot around the collar as they catch their breath. Shiro is the first to recover when he leans back to rest against the couch. His eyes shine as he takes in the moments that pass between them, and Lance can feel some sort of sappy statement building in his own throat as he stares right back.

Shiro’s hand comes back to press against his cheek, a thumb grazing across his smooth skin, and Lance’s eyes flutter shut again reflexively. Shiro softly speaks sweet words to him like that, caressing him with the softest of touches, but neither would be able to recall exactly what was said in the moment.

They end up falling asleep like that, nestled together like two puzzle pieces that have been kept apart for millennia; the fire slowly dying behind them. The night passes by slow, granting them even more time to soak in one another’s presence.

*

“Here’s your clothes.” Lance says as he holds out a small, drawstring bag. The tow truck has already pulled up in front of Shiro’s broken down ride. Said car is already half-hitched to it, too, like the second to last nail in their coffin.

“Thank you, Lance.”

Shiro begins to pull the clothes out, but Lance places his hand over top to stop him. “Don’t worry about it. Think of it as a goodbye present.”

They both pretend not to frown at that.

The sun beams heavily down at them, prompting sweat to brew at their brows, and Lance kicks at the searing dirt with his bare toes. The ground crackles under the force of it, fragile and dry as if it had never rained at all and brought them together in the first place.

When the silence drags on between them too heavily, Lance squints up at the sky and pretends his eyes are getting watery from that.

They don’t bring up the 'soulmates' thing, but they both feel it anyway.

“Guess this is the last I’ll be seeing of you around here.” Lance says, finally.

Shiro stays quiet for a minute longer, but when Lance shoots him a sad smile, he lets himself step forward to slide his hands along Lance’s waist.

The latter hesitantly returns the touch, but his brain short-circuits when Shiro presses a dazing kiss across his lips. It’s heavy and desperate in the most satisfying of ways— all kinds of words and sentiments balled up into one— and he probably would have swooned on a satin couch if he had one available in the moment.

When the kiss breaks, he finds himself being held upright by Shiro’s steady hands as the latter offers him a wolfish grin. “Who says?”

Shiro is much too tongue-tied to respond, so Shiro presses another, much more tender kiss to his forehead. “Besides— I still have to pay you back for the wine. How does dinner sound?”

Lance splutters, overwhelmed. “Uh… Wh— obviously!” Then, with an almost unappealing snort, “I’m supposed to be the smooth one, Takashi.”

Shiro only smiles wider at him, offering a wink as he flips his phone from his back pocket. The tow-truck driver awkwardly coughs into their fist behind them, so Shiro hurries to steal Lance’s phone, too, and exchange their numbers.

*

As he slides into the passenger side of the truck, Lance waves goodbye to him with both arms, even as Shiro sticks his head out the window.

“Call me when you decide wherever you want me to take you out!” He calls, just as the truck starts up and begins to drive down the dirt path. Lance shouts something in response that gets lost in the car’s backfire.

Instead, Lance sticks two thumbs up and hops up and down to be sure he sees them.

Shiro watches him until he disappears in the dirt cloud kicked up by the pickup truck’s wheels, but the house stays visible to him in the rearview much longer than that.

The truck dips down a gradual slope in the road, cutting off his desperate gaze as the house gets lost to the landscape.

A few seconds later, Shiro feels his phone vibrate insistently at his hip.

‘ _Dinner at your place ;)_ ’ The text reads.  _‘I’ll bring the “meat”.’_

Then, as if Shiro didn’t get it, Lance immediately sends him an eggplant emoji. Along with another. And another— all in rapid succession, and enough for him to get a strange look from the driver as his phone continues to vibrate in his palm.

Is it bad that Shiro only gets more smitten with him?

Oh, well.

**Author's Note:**

> pls check out my friends tumblr [@niffty24](http://niffty24.tumblr.com/) <3 give them some love!
> 
> unrelated: flustered shiro is a literal gift and we need more of it


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